Following the wrong tradition?

René Guénon was a French thinker who is often regarded as the founder of Traditionalism. He wrote "The crisis of the modern world" in 1927. It's his most accesible work, and arguably the only well known one. The book is rather short and should be considered an introduction to Guénon's philosophy, rather than a final statement of it.

Guénon was a dissident Catholic when he wrote "The crisis of the modern world". Later, he moved to Egypt and converted to Sunni Islam. Meanwhile, Traditionalism became a very heterogenous movement, evolving in all kinds of unexpected directions, many of whom Guénon would have disapproved of. (The story is told in Mark Sedgwick's scholarly study "Against the modern world".)

Being "modern", I find relating to Guénon's book difficult. He rejects virtually everything in the modern world: philosophy, science, democracy, social equality, individualism, nationalism and materialism. He criticizes modern Western religion, seeing it as shallow, materialistic or sentimentalist. German idealism isn't good either, and Theosophy is also in for a whipping. Guénon's rejection of modernity is very radical. Some conservatives long for the Holy Alliance or the ancien regime, others want to revive the spirit of the Renaissance or classical Greece, and still others simply want Ike and Jim Crow back. Guénon, on the other hand, rejects the Renaissance and also criticizes classical Greece and Rome. To him, the kind of philosophy that makes human reason paramount and hence rejects "tradition" is already on the slippery slope to modernity. In a sense, he is quite correct: it's difficult to imagine modern science without a prior development of philosophy, and this kind of philosophy did indeed start in ancient Greece.

Guénon is more positive towards the Middle Ages, but he places the beginning of the modern world in the 14th century rather than the late 15th or early 16th centuries. Modernity is older than both the Renaissance and the Reformation. Again, he has a certain point. In another book, he points to the dissolution of the Knights Templar as the decisive event. Despite their attack on the Templars, Guénon nevertheless regards the Catholic Church as the only traditional organization left in the Western world, and he hopes that it's medieval spirit can somehow be revived. (As already mentioned, he later abandoned this hope, and converted to Islam.)

However, Guénon's alternative isn't a simple return to some traditional religion. Rather, he believes in the existence of a primordial and secret spiritual tradition, which isn't identical to any of the established religions. Those who reject modernity should convert to a traditional religion and follow its precepts, but this is simply a matter of outer forms. The real message of Guénon is the secret doctrine supposedly underlying all religions, a doctrine known only to a small group of elect.

But what is this esoteric message? In "The crisis of the modern world", Guénon liberally uses Hindu terminology. He talks about the kali yuga, the blending of castes, the roles of the Brahmanas and the Kshatriyas, and so on. He mentions the Vedas and the Bhagavad-Gita. However, he also incorporates ideas of a more uncertain provenance: legends of sunken or lost continents, ideas about frequent pre-columbian contacts with the New World, and something that sounds like conspiracy theory. Finally, he mentions ancient astrology and alchemy, two ideas presumably derived from the Hermetic tradition. Thus, Guénon isn't simply calling for a return to pre-modernity or conservative religion. His Traditionalism turns out to be a blend of many different ideas, some of whom are suspiciously similar to those of Theosophy, a new religious movement Guénon vehemently opposes!

"The crisis of the modern world" isn't simply an attack on modernity. It's also an attempt to create what is, in effect, a new religion. But what could be more modern than that? Ironically, René Guénon might have been more modern than he imagined.

To a modern (!) reader, Guénon's book also sounds hopelessly naïve and idealist. He attacks the constant agitation and strife of the modern world. Point taken. But there was plenty of agitation and strife during the Middle Ages as well, not to mention the ancient world, and it's difficult to imagine that India was any better in this regard than the rest. Guénon also hopes that East and West will understand each other and come to live in peace, if only the West could return to its traditional culture. But Muslims and Christians constantly fought each other during the Middle Ages. Yet, the book never mentions the crusades. It's difficult to imagine that a Catholic Europe and a revived Muslim world would enter into ecumenical negotiations.

Perhaps a Traditionalist will respond, that this observation is correct but beside the point, since we have lived in the kali yuga (the dark age) for about 6000 years. But this leads to another problem: there were indeed peaceful civilizations before this time, such as the Indus Valley Civilization, and perhaps Minoan Crete, and many Neolithic settlements. However, these societies, with their strangely egalitarian traits and/or worship of nature or the Goddess, doesn't seem to conform to the "traditional data" expounded by Guénon.

Somehow, it feels as if René Guénon might have been following the wrong tradition...